


Love Left to Languish

by Gyptian



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Aftermath of Possession, Broken Families, Character Study, Family Reunions, Gen, Grieving, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Pining, Post-Season/Series 01 Finale, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 18:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19323778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: Two lonely people bond over having loved and lost someone they loved for years. A grieving Isobel stumbles into Alex failing to communicate with his long-lost sister over lunch. They put their lives back together from there.





	1. Isobel

**Author's Note:**

> AO3 does not seem to have noticed Isobel's name changed along with that of other characters in the Roswell Reboot, hence the confusion of tags. I'm going to stick to the canon spelling. 
> 
> I am working to get this fic a happy ending, but the characters are very much following their own game plan, so I'll update tags as I discover where the story goes.

Isobel slammed the trunk closed, now empty of Noah's clothes. She glanced up at the back end of the second-hand store, where she'd dropped garbage bags two by two in the clothing donation bin, petty satisfaction simmering in her soul. Noah would hate to see his tailored suits be worn by strangers. He had loved them as much as he had seemed to love her.

Half a dozen young men in neon-yellow vests had collected around the door, ostensibly smoking, mostly staring at her. She could feel Noah's ghost standing behind her shoulder, pointing out the two he'd helped. Faces she'd seen when she walked into his office to have lunch together.

The afterglow of her petty revenge proved as fleeting as any good emotion did these days. The ice of hell speared its fingers through her chest again, stabbed her in the base of her skull.

They had been the toast of the town, the lawyer who worked many pro bono cases and the event planner who helped charities with their fundraisers. She on his arm, he on hers, as the situation demanded.

She let her hair slash through the spectre's gorgous, monstrous face. She jammed sunglasses on her nose and slid into his BMW, now cherry red.

Isobel slumped in the driver's seat while she breathed and breathed until the abyss withdrew a bit. Until she could gather enough shards together that her fingers would not tremble and her sight would not go dark. Then she put the car in reverse and pulled away from the staring eyes in the parking lot.

~*^*~

Isobel strode into the Pasta Cafe for lunch, because Noah hated Italian food and posh places. She stopped short when she locked eyes with Alex Manes. She waited for him to glance away, pretend he hadn't seen her. As so many people did these days.

Instead, he kept looking. His wide-eyed panic, the sheer emotion, drew her forward like a hungry parasite, until she found herself standing next to his table.

“Who's this, then, Lex?” asked a bright voice, a young woman also seated at the table. Isobel squinted at her, trying to place the air of familiarity she carried. Then, Alex's expression smoothed and - well. The woman's skin tone was a more copper beige and her hair lay in a smooth curve over one shoulder but otherwise they looked almost identical. Isobel inhaled, the surprise loosening the grip of the ice that had taken hold of her in Max's absence.

Alex rubbed his face in his hands and waved a hand between them. “Elly, my sister. Isobel Evans, Guerin's sister.” Isobel's eyebrows lifted at both titles. Elly lit up.

“Oh, _really_?” Isobel wanted to melt away before the force of the young woman's sunny smile. “Please join us, my brother's being ever so reticent about the guy he's name-dropped in every email he ever sent me.” The chair catty-corner to Alex was pushed out from the table unevenly.

Isobel glanced at Alex, checking in. He gave a resigned little nod. She plopped down in the seat, folded her hands in front of her and glanced between the siblings. “I feel I'm interrupting a family reunion.” she said.

Alex's shoulders sagged a little bit. Elly drummed manicured nails against her chin, her elbow propped on the ivory linnen of the table. “Only Lex's complete failure to use his words in face-to-face conversations.” She smiled a perfect four-tooth smile. “And this after I flew into Roswell especially to see him for Christmas.”

Isobel felt her ribs freeze and compress in their vise with a vengeance, only a squeak managing to escape. She'd managed to forget for a moment, what week it was. Alex leaned over the table, touching her fingers lightly. “You alright?” She shook her head silently in response. He poured a glass of water, ice cubes splashing out of the carafe, and pressed it into her hands. It exacerbated the chill in her hands. She clamped her palms beneath her arms.

Elly was staring at her, wide-eyed. “What the hell?”

Alex turned to her. “I told you a lot had happened these past weeks.”

“Understatement.” She combed the sweep of hair that fell over her shoulder. “Alright, uh, so.”

Isobel felt herself pulled back to the present by the younger woman's distress. “I'd love something warm to drink,” she said quietly. 

Elly flagged down a waiter with an enthusiastically flapping arm. “Tea?” she checked, confirming the order with the waiter when Isobel nodded.

They focused on their menus while awkward silence reigned.

Isobel closed hers first, she'd come for pasta, after all. She unrolled her cutlery from her napkin, smoothed it over her lap even though she was wearing three-day-old jeans, let her hands clench around her knees between two layers of linen. She'd picked herself up off the couch because she was lonely. Why couldn't she even keep a conversation going now she'd actually found company that had invited her to stay?

When a man touched her elbow, Noah's fingers seemed to burn into her skin, his disembodied grin hovering close to her shoulder. She flew up from the table, staring at Alex's hand wild-eyed. “I...”

“D'you want to order food?” he asked, nodding his head at the waiter hovering behind the empty seat. Isobel let herself descend back into her seat, even when the prickling stares of other patrons made her want to run, made her want to twist around to demand they keep their eyes to themselves. 

To the hovering teen in an apron, she said, “Penne Al Arrabiata with salad.” He skedaddled. She looked at Elly, whose menu stood bowed between slack fists. Her wide eyes made her look very young compared to Alex, who now smirked to himself. When Isobel raised an eyebrow at him, he squinted his eyes and shook his head.

Right then. Time moved on even when the worst happened. Isobel did what she'd done since she'd been a little girl. She made a crown of air and thought between her fingers and put it on her head. She let her fingers curl to pull tendrils behind her ears to make the movement look natural. She let her head bear up beneath the imagined weight, her shoulders straighten and steel sheathe her spine. 

She looked up at Elly. “You flew into town for Christmas, you said. Welcome to Roswell. How are you liking it so far?”

Elly blinked out of her stupor and grabbed hold of her soda with both hands. “I only just arrived. I'm staying across the road for now.” She indicated the Marriot across the road with a sweep of her hands, where Isobel knew rooms went for a hundred-and-fifty a night, expensive for a college student. She raised an eyebrow at a stone-faced Alex while Elly added, “Until we can see if we can stand each other.”

“Oh? Sounds like there's a story there,” Isobel prompted.

“Yeah,” Elly perked up at this. “My mom'd promised to tell me about my dad when I was eighteen. So she sat me down and told me she'd been married to a man called Jesse Manes, that I had an older brother and several half-brothers she'd left behind when she was pregnant with me. I wrote to them and Alex here replied, even though he was in Iraq at the time.” She squeezed her brother's hand. “I couldn't fly out earlier with my summer internship so I'm glad I finally got to meet him today.” She smiled up at him. “I mean, we'd skyped, but nothing could quite convey this fluffiness.” Manicured nails skritched Alex Manes and destroyed the stoic wounded war-hero composure in zero seconds flat when he squawked and flapped his hand at her arm.

Isobel hid a giggle behind a hand. Elly beamed at her. Alex straightened his hair with the air of peacock. “This takes half an hour to get right,” he said to his sister.

She snorted. “You're a soldier boy. I'm pretty sure you're supposed to have a buzzcut or something.”

“Airman.” he told her. “Also, gay.”

“Stereotype, much?”

“I'm allowed to make jokes about my own orientation,” he said. They sat back to allow plates to be put in front of them. Isobel nodded up at the waiter in thanks and scooped the first spicy bite into her mouth. Oh, God, wonderful.

She opened her eyes to see she Alex staring at her again, who now nodded in satisfaction and busied himself with his own food. Elly was trying and failing to get the strings of cheese hanging off the pizza slice she held aloft into her mouth. With tomato sauce dripping down her chin and her mouth full she said to Isobel, “So give me the low-down on Guerin.” 

Isobel swallowed her half-chewed pasta and felt it move slowly down her gullet. She swallowed down half the tea that left her dry-mouthed. “Excuse me?” she croaked.

Despite the laser-eyes Alex was aiming at her face, Elly said, “Well, he hung the moon and stars and all, but I don't actually know much about him.” 

Isobel blinked. She knew Michael had squatted in the Manes' shed, knew how deep Michael had fallen from his absolute, desperate silence on the subject whenever she'd needled him. She'd never dreamed Alex, stalwart Manes man, could have returned the feelings in equal measure. They'd only hung out for a few weeks, after all, between prom and Alex's signing up for the Air Force. She also couldn't square that description with her mess of a brother. Still... Alex now acted like he was glued to his food, shoulders bowed, head down.

She looked at Elly, who was something between hopeful and desperate, now, a girl who wanted to connect to her brother, not one who wanted ammunition. “Well...” Isobel said slowly, “There were three of us, but Michael got separated from Max and I in the system. We didn't meet up again until high school. By then, he was already something of a rebel and we didn't have an easy time of it, reconnecting. We did though.” She shrugged, unsure what else to say when so much of their lives had been twisted up in the secrets they needed to keep.

Elly was focused on her like she was dispensing gospel. “Really. So what's his life like now?”

Isobel swallowed the three disparaging things that sprang to mind first, what she'd said when she'd crafted an impeccable cover story of a life and he was the town drunk. Now, he was the secret genius trying to save their brother and she a shambles. “He, ah, he drifted for several years, did odd jobs. Now he's picked his interest in science back up. Still lives in his trailer, though.” She smiled. “Though he'd slap me for calling it that.”

“You got any pictures?” Elly asked. Alex's head shot up now, eyes begging. Isobel thought of the high-school photos she still had on her phone from the reunion. Tempting. But she shook her head.

Ice now broken, they finished the meal while exchanging harmless details about their lives. Isobel felt more normal than she had in days. By the time they stood up to leave, the lunch crowd had long gone and the waiter had stopped refilling the water carafe on the table. 

Alex had gone up front to pay, leaving Isobel's twenty on the table pointedly. Elly put her hand on Isobel's shoulder and smiled up at her. “Thank you so much. You saved our lunch by coming in when you did.”

Pasta and company warming her from the inside out, Isobel gave someone a hug for the first time in weeks. Elly squeezed her before they both stepped back. “I...” Isobel swallowed the lump in her throat down. “I needed the company, too.”

“Uhm, would you... I'd like to stay in touch. I mean, you know my brother and...” Elly trailed off awkwardly.

Isobel felt mischief curl up through her chest and asked,“Do you have Instagram?” Elly nodded. “I've got some nice pictures of Michael on there."

“Oh!” Elly clapped her hands and fumbled for her phone. 

They exchanged details just before Alex came back, who frowned in suspicion at their broad grins. “Thank you for lunch,” Isobel told him, before leaving Pasta Cafe feeling a hundred pounds lighter. She didn't even notice the occasional passer-by stopping to crane their neck at her.


	2. Alex

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a second chapter on the same day. Fixed Isobel's knowledge of Alex and Michael's relationship in the previous chapter to fit what she says in episode 13.

It was too-bloody-early in the morning and Alex couldn't focus. Or sleep. He played with the keyboard desultorily while his decryption program ran on the third drive Kyle'd snatched from Caulfield. He shouldn't have gone to see Michael, but he hadn't been able to resist. Guerin'd been such an open, bleeding wound this past month that now, when they'd pulled off a Christmas miracle and managed to get Max back, he had to see if Michael was doing better.

He had still been an open wound, bleeding a little more sluggishly at best. It had hurt to see him hurt.

> _We're fucking Romeo and Juliet, you and I._

Hurt to have Michael yell at him. Hurt to see Michael shirtless, blocking the door to his Airstream like he was defending his castle against the enemy.

> _You're a Manes, and your family has been hunting mine, hurting mine, killing mine, fucking experimenting on mine since the day I arrived on this planet._

Hurt to hear his voice go quiet and shaking and vulnerable, breaking. Hurt to beg him by his last name, because he didn't have a right to his first name, to that intimacy, to please stop, please listen.

> _You're not listening. Your father – your father killed my mother, Manes. I had to live without her all my life and he fucking tortured and killed her._

Hurt to know that now he was finally ready to be there for Michael, he was the last person on Earth Michael wanted to be around.

> _Run back to your bromance with fuckin' Kyle Valenti. Go bond over your father's sins and your family's alien hunting, but leave me out of it, Manes. Leave me alone._

Hurt to have the door slammed in his face. Hurt more every step away he took from the man who meant the world to him.

So here he was in the bunker, because if there was one abandoned prison with half a dozen survivors from the 1947 crash, guarded by the brother his father liked only slightly better than he did Alex, then there could be more. Then there was just a sliver of a possibility he could give Michael the family he wanted, now that humanity had failed him so completely.

~*^*~

When he had dragged his arse over to the Wild Pony that morning, to try the indirect approach first, Maria had plopped into a booth with him. “I'm worried about Michael,” she'd said wistfully. “He came in here, the day Rosa came back from the dead. Started playing the guitar. I noticed his hand had been healed. But as soon as I asked him about it, he vamoosed. Haven't seen him since.”

Alex'd nodded into his freshly squeezed orange juice miserably. He hadn't even touched the bacon and eggs she'd put in front of his nose.

She'd put an arm around him and pressed his head to her chest. “Now what exactly's got you all twisted up, hm? You can tell Mama.” He'd twisted in her one-armed embrace so he could hide his face in her neck and put his arm around her waist. “Wow. That bad.” She'd stuffed her fingers into his hair to scritch his scalp. “'s gonna be alright, babe. Somehow. 's gonna be. Just. Fine. We just have to hang in there.”

Later, when he got done crying all over her shoulder and she got done getting his hair salty and wet with her own tears, she'd sent him home with a box full of sandwiches. “I love that boy, Alex, but I loved you first, alright?”

He'd bussed her on the forehead and croaked, “If he comes to you, can you...” He shook his head.

Maria, fortunately, had been hearing the words he didn't say for many years. “Of course. And maybe he'll come to you.”

He'd nodded. And so their pact was made. It had lent him courage, just enough, and, well. He hadn't wanted to wait any longer. He'd been waiting for Michael to come to him over a month.

~*^*~

He shut down the computers when the disc was deciphered. He couldn't read a word on the screen, pixels swimming and blurring in front of his eyes. He crawled home through the grim gray of early dawn.

He dropped out of the cabin of his truck feeling like he'd been on a week-long forced march. Bad idea. His already-swollen stump throbbed in its sleeve, complaining it had been on way too long. Sharp pain spiked up his leg, his spine, spreading into cramped muscles.

When he shuffled up the steps to his cabin, he stopped.

Isobel Evans was sitting against his front door, curled up in her winter coat, head on her knees, snoring.

Expletives piled over each other in his head. He groaned.

Her head shot up, hands splayed against the door, eyes wide with panic. He wasn't up to being polite, however. “You're blocking my front door,” he said.

Her eyes bored into him, through him, but it took a few seconds before she actually discerned who he was. Her whole body shrunk back into a miserable ball.

He shuffled to lean against the wall by the door handle. Jangled his keys pointedly.

“Yes,” she said. “I need the name of your therapist.”

“What.” Pain brought out the Manes meanness in him and his voice was a whip of flat disbelief. “I have a phone. Get out of here.”

“No, wait! I can't. I couldn't have this be overheard... what if they're watching... what if...” She trailed off, thousand yard stare back on and still blocking the door.

He unlocked it and poked her in the hip with his bionic leg until she moved away from it instinctively, twisting around with her fists up to defend herself. It was all he needed to finally open his door.

He was reduced to a slow shuffle, so she'd wedged herself halfway over the threshold by the time he got done twisting around to close the door behind him. “Come on in,” he said sarcastically, deciding he was too tired for a fight. Let her haunt his living room while he got some sleep, for all he cared.

He ducked into his mini-fridge for the yoghurt while she made herself at home on his couch. He shook Friday's assortment pills into his hand from the box-of-days that lived on top of the fridge. He ate them one by one with the yoghurt, spooned straight from the pot. His stomach let him know he needed to eat, so he finished the half a quart that was left and grabbed Maria's sandwiches from the fridge. Put them on the coffee table.

That was when he discovered Evans had the same soulful eyes as Guerin. He had a little more defense against them, since they looked up at him from a woman's face, but he still affirmed his accidental offer of food with a wave of his hand and went fill two glasses of water.

She was halfway through her second sandwich by the time he sat down next to her. “These are amazing,” she mumbled around a mouthful of Maria's best, Turkey, brie and cranberry.

“Gift from a good friend,” he said quietly, the exhaustion more mellow now he knew the pain was going to subside in a few minutes. He bit into his own.

“Not Liz's style,” she said speculatively.

“Maria.”

“Oh.” She paused, looked down at the sandwich. “Why the hell is she pouring alcohol down trashy men's gullets if she can make a mint selling these?”

Through clenched teeth Alex spat, “You should stop telling people how to live their lives.”

“I didn't-” She withdrew a tissue from a pocket, put down the sandwich. Folded her hands in front of her. “I'm sorry,” she said with enough sincerity that Alex twisted around to stare at her. “I have issues.”

“No kidding,” he responded, but she continued talking over him. A flood, the dam now broken.

“My vampire of a husband has been borrowing my body since I was fourteen years old, stalking Rosa, killing her. He completely took me in and let me pretend I could use him for my cover story of a life and boss him around in bed. He made me hold a gun to my own brother's head. Made me a puppet. Made me a fucking Renfield and now I don't even know which part of me was him and what was me. Can't tell where my love for him ended and his control over me began. I don't even know if I'm straight or bisexual.” She finally ran out of words, sat panting and crying on his couch, fists clenched, hair wild, eyes fierce.

The last word brought Alex up short. “Bisexual?”

“Yeah. I.” She sighed. “When he controlled my body, ten years ago, he fell in love with Rosa. I thought I was just along for the ride but now, every time I walk into town and I see her.” Her throat clicked with her slow swallow. “I don't know if I feel what he felt, like some sort of echo off the memories, or if I had a crush on her too. It's like I'm a stranger in my own mind, in my own body when I see her and I – I want to run up to her and kiss her.” She looked utterly miserable at the thought, backing away until she was slumped over the back of his couch, chin pointed at the ceiling. “So I thought, you're still recovering so you're probably seeing a therapist or a counselor or whatever, someone that's okay with queer people, right? You must know...” Her voice trailed off, head twisting to the side so she could look at him.

He smirked at her. “My therapists have been assigned by the Air Force, so no dice.” He closed his eyes when she started looking desperate again. It had to be an alien superpower, having eyes that melted the hardest of hearts. Look at how the other Evans'd twisted Liz around his little finger. She'd been ready to kick his arse all over town before, from what Kyle'd told him. “Maria probably knows someone.”

“Maria hates me,” Isobel said.

“Maria hates what she thinks you did to Rosa,” he corrected.

“And how's that better?” she yelled.

“You can tell her the truth,” he yelled back, because God, he was beyond tired and beyond done with indulging Roswell's Ice Queen, broken as she was.

“Oh.” She stared again, now, blinked. Then she rose, a semblance her usual sang-froid in place just like that. She looked back at him. “You think she can be trusted.”

“Unreservedly.” He put the lid back on the sandwiches, shuffled past Isobel to the kitchen.

He looked up when she said his name, softly. Saw her lips widen in an echo of Guerin when he lowered his walls enough to show the oceans of helpless love he hid in his battered heart. Alex hadn't expected her to be capable of that facial expression. His own heart skipped a beat when for a second, he saw Michael in front of him rather than her. When he blinked, it was Isobel again. “Thank you. For the sandwiches. And for your honesty.”

“Yeah,” was all he knew to say before she went out the front door. He dragged himself into his bedroom so he could finally take off his leg and sleep.

~*^*~

Pounding woke him. For a moment, he thought it was his head, but he hadn't forgotten his meds today. Then he realised it was the door and rolled off his bed with a groan. He licked his fuzzy teeth. Plucked at his wrinkled clothing. He'd just passed out, hadn't he? He really needed to start taking some care of himself again, even if his heart had been flushed down the toilet.

His stump was still sore, so he hobbled to the front door on his crutches. He unlocked it to reveal a wild-eyed Maria.

“Since when is Isobel Evans as delusional as my mother?!” she asked.

He stepped aside to let her into the cabin. Good thing he had an espresso machine.

 


	3. Isobel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note rating and tags have been changed to reflect story developments. Fair warning: this chapter became a deep dive into Isobel's head.

In December, Isobel felt frozen. Max's buzz in her mind had stilled into a corpse she couldn't – didn't want to – throw out. Slack where there had been support, unnoticed until it was gone. Intense chill emanating from a gap in her mind she could not fill.

The quiet misery of his absence underpinned life in a body she'd only just won back from Noah. For the last thirteen years, she'd only inhabited at the indulgence of an unseen overlord. She found herself wishing she'd been human. Wishing she'd actually been silenced when the vagrant had put his hand over her mouth on their camping trip, unable to call for her brother with her mind. Wishing her body had only been ransacked the once, rather than invaded and subjugated by the insidious mind of the man who had pretended to love her.

Her legs took her places in the house when she was spaced out and she wondered if it was her habit or his conditioning. Her arms reached for food, for clothes and she wondered if she had chosen them or he had convinced her to take them up with his soft words, with promises of rewards at home.

She had found herself standing in her walk-in closet, wondering if she should burn the lot. Then, out of the abyss rose the part of her that fought tooth and claw for her life, for her brothers, for a place on this thrice-damned planet. _No,_ it said, _he does not get to take this from me._

While she had the strength, Isobel walked through all the rooms of _her_ house. _I claim this_ she thought at the sight of the ebony side table she'd found at an estate sale. _You are mine,_ she thought, consecrating each tube of lipstick, every eyeliner with the thought. She walked into the bathroom and conquered everything with a thorough sweep of her eyes, except for his dad-joke-a-day calendar. That, she tossed onto his desk along with every other paper of his she shredded night after cathartic night.

Isobel strode out onto the patio like Caesar into Gaul and felt the whole of herself quake like his enemies at the memory of that night, their last best date night together. She pointed at each seat, every pillow. The half-burnt candles. Every potted plant.

 _That is mine and that is mine and that is mine._ When that thought grew too thin in her head with its repetition, she started speaking out loud. When her voice wavered, she yelled it. She conscripted each item into her army until she could only rasp the phrase at the stack of photo albums in a small bookcase in a dark corner of the den. “Hhhhmine,” she whispered to the last of them and then fell to her knees, exhausted.

Her face was wet when she touched it, had been this whole time, the way her head pounded with a dehydration headache. She picked herself up, one slippered foot at the time. Black came over her eyes when she pushed off her hands to stand up straight. She caught herself on the wall and made her way over to the kitchen to down a half a gallon of water.

Her spiritual victory over her domain assured, she went to purify her body with a hot bath, tossing in a patchouli bath bomb that would have made the devil recoil and wrinkle his nose in disgust.

~*^*~

In December, Isobel went to visit Max every morning before work. Not because he had visited her, not to read books as he had, when she knew he couldn't hear her. Isobel went to visit her brother because she had loved him for as long as she could remember. She made the daily pilgrimage to see him, drove over, got out of her car, dove into the cave and petted his pod because she was sure her mind was her own when she made those choices. She stood in front of his almost-but-not-quite-entirely-dead body and said “I love you” out loud every morning because she knew she did.

Then she could emerge into the first light of day, cold to the bottom of her soul, and tell herself it was just winter, just waiting. Then she could drive to work and smile in the faces of her three colleagues even when she'd heard them whisper about her in the break room. Then she could answer the phone and smile at entitled parents wanting their child's birthday bash to be professionally organised and nod along with snobbish young women who wanted their wedding look like a million dollars while spending only a million pennies.

The only morning she paused in the mouth of the cave was once, in the first week, when she heard Michael's voice, raw, giving it to Max good about his saviour complex. _Even Jesus had only healed the blind when they asked, goddammit_ and _you need to fucking stop it because I make an awful Hermione and Iz'd kill you if she had to go around with ginger hair, you great big idiot_ and _you know we do much better as backup dancers to Iz's Taylor Swift act, Maximo, c'mon, why do you have to try and steal the limelight?_ Isobel clamped a hand over her mouth and trembled, unsure if it was a laugh or a sob that would come out first.

It didn't matter. Michael broke off his monologue and after a pause boots came clomping towards the entrance. “Iz?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she squeaked, hand on her chest to make sure the splinters of her heart wouldn't fall out and scatter across the dirt. He stopped out of arm's reach and looked everywhere but at her. She stared at him, at a loss for words.

His broad shoulders sagged beneath the weight of their brother's salvation. “Haven't made much progress yet,” he said in a small voice and oh, of course, her rational mind said now he stood in front of her. He hadn't been too busy. He didn't hate her.

He thought his only worth was giving her other brother back to her.

Lost for words, she raised her hands and softly caught his face between them. She stroked her thumbs over his cheekbones until he looked up at her with his heartsore eyes. “When you find a cure,” she began, tutting when he opened his mouth to interrupt, “ _Whenever_ that is, the three of us are going to go to a photographer and get our picture taken. I've decided need a proper portrait of my _real_ family, now our cover's gone and blown itself up in our faces.”

He was like a puppet, hanging limp from her hands, face slack and eyes looking through her.

A great love for both her boys welled up in her. Noah had hated them so much, that she had chosen them over him whenever they called, the competition they had been. This, he had never been able to take from her, the sister she was, the brothers she had.

Squinting, she pushed into Michael's mind, gently, gently. He stood in the past, in the storm that had raged the night they fought Noah, not the quiet morning it really was. _I love you,_ she told him and when he tried to draw away, more firmly, _I have always loved you._ She showed him what she could not say. The love of a girl with no words for the two boys she'd been born besides. The longing of a teenager for a distant memory of a boy who hadn't come home with Max and her. The angry, guilty protectiveness of a teenager towards a brother who was also a broken stranger. The suffocating affection of a young woman forever trapped in the closet as aliens, along with her brothers. The savage love of the monster who had come closer and closer to the surface over the last months who thought, _just like me._ The enduring cold where Max used to be, where he was, just sometimes, but always, always when she really needed him.

Michael _pushed_ and she fell out of his mind.

“No, Iz, I can't,” he choked, and ran.

She sat on her butt in the half-frozen dirt, wondering why she always seemed to get it wrong when it came to Michael.

~*^*~

Mid-December, Rosa Ortecho started appearing around downtown Roswell for short walks on her sister's arm. Isobel saw them on her lunch breaks, sometimes, when she walked the two blocks down to where she could browse restaurants and stores. These days, she usually didn't go in, unwilling when she caught the eyes of people inside glancing at her surreptiously.

Rosa was a safer, happier thing to focus on. The girl her brother had saved because he loved Liz beyond all reason. Jealousy was a small, weak stirring, these days. They'd all had a human anchor to pull them out of their codependent alien trinity. Only she had been living a lie, married to another monster living a lie.

The dark heads of the sisters came down the street together, giving her a reprieve from the unwanted attention. Liz strode down the street as she always did, shoulders squared and eyes scanning for challengers. She took small steps, however, to let Rosa follow along, who alternated between looking around wide-eyed and looking at her feet. It was a reversal of their younger days, when Rosa had spread her wings to shield her sister from the world.

Isobel looked at the sisters and remembered a tentative friendship, twisting into a darker obsession. She tried to push the emotions-that-weren't-hers away, to look beyond them at Rosa. To her consternation, she'd felt herself flush, not just once or twice. Not with embarrassment or second-hand shame for being an unwitting tool in Noah's stalking of Rosa. No.

She told herself it was just the traces Noah had left inside of her. It was easy, when any good feeling withered when it touched the soil of her wintry soul. She was still a half-frozen creature while Max slept on.

~*^*~

The night before Christmas, well, the night before Christmas _Eve,_ Liz dipped her hands into silvery liquid and then drew her lover out his pod. Kyle immediately crouched beside them to inject Max straight into the heart. Michael clipped the two ends of a power generator's cords to each of his brother's thumb. Everyone stepped back before he flipped the switch.

One, two, three seconds passed before Max coughed. Then he barfed blood all over Liz's shoes. She couldn't have looked happier if he'd risen up in a sparkly magical cloud and stepped out of it a handsome cowboy alien prince.

Isobel let her have a moment before she stumbled forward and stroked Max's disgusting, goopy hair.

When she looked up, Michael was gone.

“Liz. Iz,” her resurrected brother whispered.

“I'm here,” she said in concert with Liz.

~*^*~

On Boxing Day Isobel discovered that yes, Noah's feelings for Rosa were leavened with her own in her memories of the girl. She had been a passenger inside her own head. She'd been helpless to do anything but look, think. Feel.

Feel along with him.

Was even her mind not her own?

Was there any part of her he hadn't touched?

 


End file.
